Rwanda can avoid Uganda’s mistakes on term limits

Even though the ruling group in Rwanda (RPF) is almost entirely borne out of the Uganda’s NRA ranks, and the guns they shot into Rwanda with came from Uganda’s armories, Paul Kagame does not need to follow the same exact political steps as his ideological father Yoweri Museveni. Because it is not a good path.

The world is watching Kagame put on an elaborate deceptive act as Museveni did to remove presidential term limits. Using deception, coming in with state machinery, strong-armed to force political and military leaders to go along the little coup on democracy, Kagame is properly dressing it all up as a political process the country needs, instead of stepping aside and the next president of Rwanda come up.

The Banyankore people have a saying ;

Ngu Enfuuzi ya biso ekazibira eya nyima kwonka”. It means that the orphan that came first, stopped the later orphan from feeding.

Kagame does not have to be the later orphan and stop Rwanda’s growth.

These countries have enough problem as it is, leaders should not add themselves as another problem.

The fact is, this whole ruse to change constitution & remove presidential terms is not a meaningful process. There is no meaningful result that can come from it for Rwanda. If Uganda’s example is to go by, since 2005 Uganda is gone back to its former self under Obote. If Museveni today met Obote, they would hug and become best friend – for they have trodden the same path. If you were to trace Museveni’s NRA war principles as stipulated, you will not find a single one alive. His own comrades have been leaving one by one on the same principles. Just like Kagame has resorted to murdering his own comrades in recent years.

The moment a country goes into procedures where the single beneficially of that procedure is the president, the country doesn’t need that process. It is a waste of time and resources for a poor country; not about the country, it is about the individual. It is simply a man with state resources at his disposal, trying to prove that the limits which the people and fellow leader put on him, at a time when he was not powerful enough to oppose them are not worth the paper they’re written on.

In the recess of their minds, these leaders, when they come to this point, where they have to leave power by virtue of the constitution, they reason that since they did not come in constitutionally in the first place, for them to be pushed aside by a mere rule book is not acceptable. Their ego tells them not to leave just because the people feel like. It becomes an ego matter. Whatever they dress it as is false. You cannot love the country more than the country loves you. When the people sit, of sound mind and sound body, and resolve that 10 years is enough for a leader to implement his plans, and you, after those years you come and say – no, 10 years is not enough; then there is a deficiency with you & your plans. On the scale of military geniuses, Napoleon ruled France for 10 years, during which time he managed to dominate all of Europe. On the scale of democratic governance, countries where leaders rule for 10 years, written or unwritten are far more developed and stable.

So do not brand your personal ambitions as something your people want. You are already incompetent and have cost your country a great deal of resources. You are a liability to the country, not a savior as you would like to brand yourself.

The question you should ask yourself is; what problem were you trying to solve in the first place? Why did you go to war? Is it not to remove leaders who behaved just like yourself?

And again; did you fight the war alone? Or you’re thinking that the people who fought with you, and those who died, they fought for you and they died for you? Did they fight for you to stay in power long?

I think that you are disrespecting those who fought and died in war, and you are showing contempt to your people by thinking that they are not able to govern. Yours was not the last war your country has fought, or the most decisive. There are still wars to come, which you will not be around to fight.

The bottom-line is; power must be shared, or men will kill again. For this is the only scale on which your actions can be measured – power hungry! Not military genius, not brilliance technical knowledge on development. So don’t pretend like the country needs you!